The Smith Adventures: We made marshmallows

We have realized that William reacts to food dye. Like MAJORLY. Night and Day. Calm to Meltdown. Happy to Inconsolable. So we have cut them out. Finding marshmallows with no dye is hard. Not impossible, but hard. Especially when you are constantly traveling and are not sure which stores you will have to shop in. So we decided to try our hand at making marshmallows.

Now this is not a hard thing to do. It does however take some planning as they need to sit about 8+ hours to dry out. So it isn't a hey let's whip up some marshmallows to make S'Mores activity. I scoured the internet and pretty much all recipes were the same. Where it differed a lot was on how to prepare the pan. Some just had you sprinkle powdered sugar on the bottom. Some had you grease and then powder sugar. Some had you oil and then line with parchment. We went with the powder sugar only because I was out of cooking spray and I would not do just that again. I would spray and powder or use parchment.

They turned out pretty good. I think I needed to whip them longer though as they were REALLY sticky. Like REALLY REALLY STICKY. We had them dry overnight and until evening. They tasted AMAZING though. William kept saying over and over how much it was worth the wait. When we used them for S'Mores he made me post on Facebook how homemade was so much better and post a picture. We will definitely make them again.

Recipe

3 packages Unflavored Gelatin

1 C Cold Water split into 1/2

1 1/2 C Granulated Sugar

1 C Light Corn Syrup

1/4 tsp Kosher Salt

1 T Vanilla Extract

Confectioners Sugar for dusting

1. Combine gelatin and 1/2 C COLD water. Let sit in bowl with mixer with wisk attachment while you make the syrup.

2. Combine the sugar, corn syrup, salt and 1/2 C water in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Raise the heat to high and cook until the syrup reaches 240 degrees on a candy thermometer. Remove from the heat.

3. With the mixer on low pout the sugar syrup into the dissolved gelatin. Turn mixture on high and whip until the mixture is very thick. About 15 minutes or so. Add the vanilla and mix until it is all mixed in.

4. Dust the pan with a generous coating of confectioners sugar. You can also oil and then dust or oil and place a later of parchment down. Pour in mixture and smooth out and dust with more confectioners sugar.

5. Let sit at least 8 hours or overnight to dry out completely. Turn pan onto cutting board and cut into squares and dust with more sugar.

Eric mixing up the ingredients